How does Opteron 140 compare to dual Athlon MPs?

[NickCauston]

Anyone able to tell me how an Opteron 140 (1-way, 1400mhz) compares to a dual Athlon MP2800+ (or 2600 mobiles if that is better). Both setups look to be about the same cost at the moment.

I can't seem to find any simple MIPS or similar benchmarks to enable a comparission between these two different set-ups. Most tests just compare Opterons with Xeons, that doesn't help me much.

Cheers,

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: NickCauston
Anyone able to tell me how an Opteron 140 (1-way, 1400mhz) compares to a dual Athlon MP2800+ (or 2600 mobiles if that is better). Both setups look to be about the same cost at the moment.

I can't seem to find any simple MIPS or similar benchmarks to enable a comparission between these two different set-ups. Most tests just compare Opterons with Xeons, that doesn't help me much.

Cheers,

What will you be doing with it?

The dual mp2800 will be faster in anything except single-threaded apps. It's also an obsolete platform with no upgrade path. Don't get in to overclocking and non-certified parts (like SMP with mobile athlons) if this is for business use.

How much cheaper is dual MP2800+ compared to dual opteron 240, keeping in mind that 760MPX motherboards are getting hard to find?

 

[NickCauston]

Server for a network say max 15-20 users, running Exchange, handling Internet traffic (virus scanning) etc.

Reason I started looking at the dual boards is because none of the single Athlon boards allow use of ECC memory, which is something I have always built into servers. Apart from dual Athlon boards would need to go socket 940 to get a board that supports ECC.

So actually we probably don't need the twin cpus just that if we are forced to go for a dual motherboard we might as well use it, maybe even with a pair of 2400mobiles.

Over here in th UK Opterons are still not available through most normal trade suppliers, only specialist overclocker outlets.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: NickCauston
Server for a network say max 15-20 users, running Exchange, handling Internet traffic (virus scanning) etc.

Reason I started looking at the dual boards is because none of the single Athlon boards allow use of ECC memory, which is something I have always built into servers. Apart from dual Athlon boards would need to go socket 940 to get a board that supports ECC.

So actually we probably don't need the twin cpus just that if we are forced to go for a dual motherboard we might as well use it, maybe even with a pair of 2400mobiles.

Over here in th UK Opterons are still not available through most normal trade suppliers, only specialist overclocker outlets.

If you want ECC, go with a XEON or Opteron system, and get a duallie board so you can add a second processor later.

Exchange for 15-20 people will run comfortably on a 800mhz P3 with 384mb of ram even when the usage is HEAVY and the message store is large (don't ask me why I know this; it wasn't my idea😉). So I doubt you're going to tax the system too heavily, at least initially.

Rather than invest in an obsolete platform, my preference would be a dual-Opteron board, with a single 24x processor. I'm sure a similar setup with a single XEON to start would work just as well though if you work somewhere with an intel bias.

Edit - just had a quick look, and opteron 242 (1.6ghz) seems like it might be the sweet-spot right now, at least in Canada. A pair of these is considerably cheaper than a single 248. I also noticed that you can't get Opteron easily - could you buy a preconfigured server from one of the major OEMs?